Comment by mytailorisrich
Comment by mytailorisrich a day ago
> Why is Thatcher significant here? She was strongly pro-EEC
Exactly, she was pro-EEC but "Eurosceptic" in that she didn't want this to morph into a political union. I mentioned her to illustrate that the debate on what the EU should be and how far political integration should go, if go anywhere at all, has been going on forever but is more and more "smothered" by accusations of being "far right" for often being not too different from Thatcher.
Remember a famous speech in Parliament in which she said that the single currency was political union by the backdoor. Exactly right.
> it was very common for remainers to claim that the EU was just a trade organisation and not going to evolve into a full political union or federal state.
That's not true. Of course it was a political union, and that was the point of the referendum. Remember the pro-Brexit's line that the people had been sold a trade organisation (in 1975) but got a political union, instead. Now there were claims that the EU would not evolve into a federal state, and this aligns with what I wrote about EU political integration being insiduous and often deceiptful
> Remember a famous speech in Parliament in which she said that the single currency was political union by the backdoor. Exactly right.
I do not think it was much of a backdoor. Anyone who looked at it could see where it should lead.
1. Further political integration was expected at the time of currency union 2. A currency union requires some amount of fiscal union to be stable so its idiotic to have one without the other
> Now there were claims that the EU would not evolve into a federal state, and this aligns with what I wrote about EU political integration being insiduous and often deceiptful
I think part of the problem is that people do not understand how the EU works. A lot of people have a very poor understanding of how their national political system works.